Proximity Inertia

I was playing a rather tedious kung-fu arcade game in a pizza place. It had conventional controls, but also had a mode where players could gesture at the screen to make the character kick or punch. It felt like I was losing pretty badly to the computer, but when I looked at the number of lives I had left it was so ridiculously large that I decided to give up instead of continue.

There was a little collection plate sitting on the game cabinet. It had a mixture of coins and lima beans in it, and it seemed the coins were turning into lima beans. A note on it said: "Please donate to help raise money to get the registered version of Magic: The Gathering on this console!"

I took the bowl to my parents, who were at a table nearby.

me: "Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a bowl of lima beans."

parents: "Yes, that's a bowl of beans."

me: "Well it was sitting on top of that arcade game, as if it were for collecting money...and I saw it had coins in it one moment, and beans the next. I want to put a coin in here, and we're going to see what happens. My bet it's going to turn into another bean."

My Dad and I went into the next room, found a penny, and put it in the bowl and stirred. As I stirred it, the beans just kind of turned into some kind of spice but the penny remained solid and just got dirty with the spice on it. Then, suddenly, a series of bright shiny dimes fanned out underneath the penny...dozens of them hung stuck together in a chain from the penny when I picked it up. We took the bowl back in to show my mother.

dad: (excited) "It made dimes out of nowhere, from a penny. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself!"

me: "We have to perform more tests. Here's a theory about how these dream objects work--maybe pennies and dimes are very close abstractions in the mind, so it is possible to produce one from the other. Or maybe the penny had been near a lot of dimes and was manifesting that memory by summoning dimes...some kind of 'proximity inertia'."

Currently I am experimenting with using Disqus for comments, however it is configured that you don't have to log in or tie it to an account. Simply check the "I'd rather post as a guest" button after clicking in the spot to type in a name.

The accounts written here are as true as I can manage. While the
words are my own, they are not independent creative works of fiction
—in any intentional way. Thus I do not consider the material to
be protected by anything, other than that you'd have to be
crazy to want to try and use it for genuine purposes (much less
disingenuous ones!) But who's to say?